This article was originally published by RFID Update.
April 6, 2005—Canadian RFID solutions provider SAMSys officially announced yesterday the scheduled debut of its GEN 2-compliant RFID reader at next week’s RFID Journal Live! conference in Chicago. In addition to GEN 2, the new MP9320 v2.8 reader will support existing EPC tag protocols Class 0, 0+, and 1, as well as the ISO’s 18000-6A and 18000-6B. “We continue to expand our RFID reader product line to support the open standard initiatives of EPCglobal and ISO,” said SAMSys president and CEO Cliff Horowitz. Supporting existing standards ensures backward compatibility that will allow those customers with existing RFID deployments to migrate gradually into GEN 2. SAMSys has been working closely with Impinj, Texas Instruments, and Philips, and it will have emulators and pre-release tags from those vendors on hand at the conference to demonstrate the new reader.
While GEN 2 support is certainly the MP9320 v2.8’s strongest draw, the reader also offers incremental improvements over its predecessor, including better performance, faster reading and writing, and regulation compliance for use across Asia.
The news so far this week has notably revolved around various companies’ introduction of GEN 2 product. On Monday Impinj released GrandPrix, a fully GEN 2 compliant RFID solution, and last Friday, Philips announced that it had shipped early-stage GEN 2 tags to partner companies for evaluation. Based on these developments, and similar ones that are almost sure to be announced at next week’s RFID Journal Live!, it is fair to say that the first wave of GEN 2 products has hit.
While the surge in GEN 2 activity is indeed exciting news, especially given the fact that it is coming a bit earlier than many expected, it should not be assumed that widespread GEN 2 adoption is just around the corner. There are many layers to the RFID ecosystem beyond just readers and tags. Middleware, business intelligence software, applications, and services are all required pieces of the puzzle that must also leverage GEN 2 for the standard to become a commercial reality. And we probably will not see that level of market maturity until early next year.
Read SAMSys’s press release